?We all Black innit??: Analysing relations between African and African-Caribbean groups in Britain

‘We all Black innit?’ examines ‘intra ethnic’ relationships between second and third generation members of British African and British African Caribbean groups, located in two key urban settings (London and Birmingham). Through unstructured interviews, it explores ways in which positive informal/formal ‘race based coalitions’ (Rogers 2004), have been forged, partly as a result of supporting and celebrating each other’s contributions to professionality (e.g education and work), and popular culture (e.g music and sports). Moreover, it discusses how members of these generations have come to embrace difference and commonalities in terms of ‘histories language and culture’ (Hall 1988:5), and the role of ‘pan ethnicity’ in facilitating these positive relationships. There is, however, acknowledgement of ‘intra ethnic’ tensions existing between these groups, largely resulting from historical (and often negative) stereotypes of each other’s cultural attributes (Mwakigale 2009, Fanon 1952), and competition for scare socio-economic resources, intensified by allocation along colour or ethnic lines (Malik 2012). The findings suggest that although this appears to have been a greater issue for migrant generations who arrived in Britain, especially between the post war era and the 1980s, to an extent it has impacted on ‘intra ethnic’ relations between the second and third generations. In the main, however, it would seem that the mutual respect between younger generations of British African and British African Caribbean people, has grown with time